Cross Country – Part II
On occasion, Ron sometimes reverted to his old, random ways. If work was done for the day and all his responsibilities were taken care of, he would quite easily park himself in the family room, pull out any one of several game consoles and burn up the better part of a day sitting and playing video games, whether they were up-to-the-minute versions of the most popular titles, or classics, like Zombie Mayhem II (which he still considered the best of the series, even if the graphics were almost twelve years out of date. Even at twenty-seven, Ron could still be counted on to be full of child-like wonder.
He still looked much the same as he had for most of his life. His hair was still a bit on the shaggy side, with loose locks of it hanging across his forehead. The back was tapered neatly, though a little cowlick still stood right smack in the middle of the transition. The only time he ever successfully got it to lay down was his Senior Prom, when he'd deliberately grown his hair a bit longer than usual so it would slick back. Even at his wedding he hadn't been able to do anything with the tuft, though it really didn't matter, since it was covered with a yarmulke for most of the day anyway.
Ron and Kim had been fighting the 'battle of the blade' almost constantly since about the first time she got pregnant. They had come back from an extended mission without access to toiletries, at roughly the same part of Ron's life when his beard really started coming in fast and heavy. The day they got him, Kim pulled out the clippers and Ron's electric razor and marched him into the bathroom to take the ratty looking beard off.
Her eyes nearly crossed when he came out sometime later with a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache. She tried everything in her arsenal to get him to finish shaving the rest of it off, but to no avail. She swore she wouldn't kiss him, that she would cut off other benefits, even tried the Puppy Dog Pout on him, but he wouldn't budge.
Three days later, when Kim found out she was pregnant, the beard came off.
Sometimes he would grow it back, though it never got as thick as it had been at first. Then Kim would wear him down and he'd shave it right back off. One time she came very close to using the electric clippers on him while he slept, but backed off with the thing in her hands, ready to hit the switch. Oddly enough, the next morning he emerged from the bathroom clean shaven once more.
She had a notion that might have been when her daughter was conceived. It was hard to tell, considering the fact they had remained…very affectionate throughout their marriage, but it was nice to be able to point to some special occasion and say that was it.
Ron never quite seemed to change all that much, really. He still dressed a comfortably as possible (though Kim wouldn't let him out of the house with his ratty old jerseys any more) and carried himself as if he didn't care who was looking at him at any given moment. It wasn't so much that he was lazy…well, he still could be at times…but that he wasn't going to be going through life uptight about things.
As Kim sank down in the leather seat, she looked him up and down. About the only difference she could see in him was his glasses and the thick gold wedding ring he had on his left hand. Its twin rested on her hand, a large but simple gold ring, the kind you could see from across the room that announce 'I'm married!' It was so large she had stopped wearing her other rings for a while, until one day she spotted them in her jewelry box and decided to wear them all. There was the emerald ring he had given her on her seventeenth birthday (with matching earrings she still wore almost constantly) and a smaller engagement ring he had given her when he first proposed right after they both turned eighteen. She tried wearing her old Middleton High School class ring for a bit, but decided that was a little too much. It sat in a little tray of its own in her large jewelry chest, right beside Ron's much larger class ring. He had worn his perhaps two weeks total since he got it, mostly right after it was delivered and once more at their Senior Prom, when Kim thought it appropriate he put it back on. The rest of the time it hung from her necklace (being far too large for her to even think of wearing on any of her fingers. It even rattled around on her thumb.)
A lot of people who spoke to Ron wouldn't come away thinking he was the brightest bulb in the pack sometimes, but when it came to things he liked, or like to do, he did them well. That morning, before they started packing the SUV, he made everyone breakfast. If there was one thing he knew, it was food, and not only did he know how to make even the simplest fare delicious, he knew what certain foods could do. With being cooped up in a vehicle, even one as large as the Glissade, with three hyperactive kids, he knew what he had to do.
Normally, when the kids hit the kitchen in the morning, they would simply start grabbing bowls of super-sweet cereal. GJ had inherited his mother's love of Captain Crunch, while the girls both liked anything that would turn their milk chocolate (or cocoa moo, as Ammie liked to call it.) That was great when they were just going to spend the summer days playing, or heading off to school as they would be doing in a couple weeks. Ron knew better than to let that happen.
GJ fussed, wanting his cereal, but ended up eating his fried eggs and bacon as well. CJ had a lean piece of pan-fried steak since she had decided for herself to start keeping kosher. The lack of highly-processed sugar in their breakfast had the desired effect. By the time they cleared the Tri-City area, they had all settled down. Then, as they reached the outskirts of Denver, all three of them had drifted off to sleep.
"Let no one doubt your mad food skills." Kim said, easing her seat back slightly to partake in the blessed silence.
"Almost blew it. CJ was up before six and was all the way up on the kitchen counter trying to get his cereal down when I got up to start making breakfast."
Kim just shook her head. "I swear, he's just like his uncles. Dad used to say they were monkeys."
Ron did a little mock shudder. "Me producing a monkey boy…irony much?"
"He's just…adventurous. He's not afraid of anything."
"Well, fear and paranoia have served me well in the past. I'm just worried he's going to learn some hard lessons. If he fell…"
"He probably would have run to us screaming that Catherine or Amethyst did it." She said resolutely. Of course, if she were the one who found him climbing the cabinets, she would likely have turned his backside the same color as her hair. Kim didn't like to use corporal punishment, but sometimes the firm application of an open hand was the only thing that could get through his thick Stoppable skull.
He also seemed to be tough as nails. One of the big no-nos in the younger Stoppable's home was that everyone wore their helmets if the so much as sat on a bike. GJ didn't think he needed one, because he didn't crash – ever. (Training wheels? What are training wheels?) He would tear around the neighborhood on his little 16 inch bike, trying all the stunts other kids two and three times his age were doing. Ron ended up having a custom sixteen inch dirt jumping bike custom made for him at the local bike shop. Most of the bikes built in that size were toys and wouldn't survive they day under the boy.
One day, though, Kim heard a horrible crash in the back yard as she did her school work on the kitchen table. Rushing outside, she saw the damaged bike sitting beside his makeshift ramp. She also saw the blood. GJ was lying in Amethyst's lap, crying softly. His helmet was broken in two pieces and there was blood on the ramp and on the bike, but he was somehow, miraculously unhurt.
"You sure you don't need help navigating?" Kim asked as Ron scanned for the off ramp.
"KP, please. I was born in Denver. I think I know my way around here pretty well."
She crossed her arms, leaning back and smiling at him. "Ronnie, you moved to Middleton when you were barely four. I don't think this is the same place twenty three years later.
"Hah, oh ye of little faith. Right here's the ramp for east Seventy. North Carolina here we come."
"First we have to get to Evansville, Illinois, baby. You're still not out of the woods yet." She gave his leg a little rub. The bet was still on. Even though they had a pretty straight shot cross-country once they cleared Denver, there were still plenty of places to get lost, such as the interchange with Interstate Sixty Four about halfway, or the place where they planned to find a room for the night, if they managed to get that far in one day of driving. The bet was that Ron was going to get them hopelessly lost and have to either use the computer navigation system in the SUV, or call Wade to talk them back to the main road. Several items were on the table, including a rather extensive backrub, though Kim had little doubt she could get him to do that anyway once they got the kids settled down that evening. One of the great joys of motherhood, especially being as normally petite as she was, was a very sore lower back much of the time.
After lunch, Kim was going to take the wheel, giving Ron the chance to catch forty winks himself, or try to control the three kids, depending on how many carbs they managed to ingest at the mid-day meal. Kim would have been all about packing a lunch so they could stay on the road. That would mean they could keep on trucking practically all day, giving them some extra time to stretch their legs and unwind once they reached Evansville. They kids would also want to hit the hotel swimming pool, no matter what the weather was like when they got there, or what the hour was.
Unfortunately, she was vetoed by a vote of four to one. If Ron had agreed with her, marshal law would have been declared and it would have been sandwiches, potato chips and juice boxes while under way. The rest of them would hear none of it. They were on a family outing, and that meant finding a fun place to eat along the way. Kim had horrible visions of pulling off the interstate and the only restaurant in sight was a J.P. Bearymore's. Just thinking about that burnt pizza smell made her want to open the door and chuck her breakfast on the blacktop. Her pregnancy had been gong smoothly for the most part, but just like the first time the morning sickness had lingered longer than expected. Even that far along, she would get queasy if she even smelled food she did not like.
Kim's eyes snapped back open. She was having a very nice dream that involved Ron where she wasn't monstrously pregnant and three screaming kids were safely in the care of GJ's grandparents. It was the smell that awakened her, not anything Ron had done behind the wheel. He was softly humming along with the old Oh Boyz track the built-in MP3 player was running. The kids were still quiet, and that was all that mattered.
Ron might not have been attuned to that particular odor as she was. It was extremely faint, much more so than it had been when she was a little girl, but to her it was unmistakable…
…nail polish!
Glancing at the chronometer in the dash, Kim realized she had actually been sound asleep for several hours. If things were not getting out of hand in the back of the SUV, then she would soon give Ron the signal that a rest stop was necessary. Her coffee that morning had been, out of necessity, decaf, but the fluid content of that ersatz brew was already taking its toll.
Twisting around, she looked in the back seats. Despite her admonishments, CJ and Amethyst had abandoned he middle row, climbing into the back seats where they could have a little privacy. She smiled to herself, knowing that at eight-and-a-half and nearly nine their idea of what required privacy was much more innocent than it would be in as short as three or four more years. Amethyst may have tested as being as intelligent as a twelve-year old or even a teen, but emotionally she was still just a little girl.
Catherine Jean, on the other hand, while doing pretty well in school herself, was pretty much just like her big brother. She was reasonably smart, but had to be pushed to reach her full potential. Perhaps that was one of the reasons they spent so much time caring for the little girl, since the elder Stoppables knew she would settle for no less.
The problem was that CJ was an odd combination of a girly-girl and a tomboy. She liked pretty things and sometimes played with dolls, but was just at home flailing around in the mud with her nephew.
While she was looking back at them, GJ opened his eyes for a moment, before scrunching them closed as he yawned and stretched. That's when Kim saw his hands…
…his nails were painted alternating purple and pink. The girls had been busy before absconding to the back seats. There was only one thing that would make boys want their fingernails painted, and that was if a cute fifteen year-old cheerleader was doing the painting. Those boys also were in the midst of puberty and well past the 'girls are icky cootie monsters' phase (Big Mike was WAAAYYYY past it, though he was scared of Rufus.)
She counted down in her head. Three, two, one…
"Gah! Get it off, GET IT OFF! MOMMIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Whoa, what's going on? Somebody spill something, what's wrong?" Ron barked, trying to keep his attention on the road. Kim made a mental note to get a high-caffeine citrus soda out of the cooler for him. His eyes had been open, but he apparently had been lulled into senselessness by the long, non-descript interstate highway.
Rufus appeared on Ron's shoulder, at full attention. He was even more protective of the kids than he was of Ron. "Rufus, why don't you go back there and keep and eye on the girls."
He gave him a little salute, then skittered to the back seat to observe the near pre-teen plotting going on back there while Kim fished around in her purse, producing a bottle of nail-polish remover and the "Mommy" equivalent of duct tape – a pack of tissues. Unhooking her restraints, she carefully climbed into the middle seat. The giggling from the back seat signaled the two knew exactly why their guardian was wriggling her enlarged form between the bucket captain's chairs toward the whining four-year-old.
"When I get my hands on the two of you…Arrgh!" Kim growled as she tried wiping the color off her son's fingers. She was having a tough time of it, considering he was even less willing to have her scrubbing the nails with the foul smelling liquid.
"Pew! Stinks, Mommy!" She tried holding onto his hand so she could get it out of his cuticles. His cries only served to make the girls laugh all that much harder.
"Don't make me stop this thing." Ron warned from the driver's seat. Even though she was quite angry with the two, she had to smile at that. It had to be a rite of passage for any father to say that while driving. Things were usually much easier in Kim's smaller, though aging PT Cruiser. She would have rather been in it herself, though it would have been quite cramped for the five of them over the next several days. Then too, it had seen its share of activities, some of which she was not about to bring up in the company of the children. In their early twenties, not all of their fun was had in the small apartment they leased before the townhouse was built.
Finally wiping the last of it off that she could without a good sink to wash the vestiges away, Kim turned around, looking over the back of the seat at the two girls. They were sitting up on the bench seat, Ron's Kimmunicator glowing between them. With a slight growl, she picked it up. "What are you doing with this?"
"Ammie was showing me how to download games." CJ said, reaching for the silver handheld.
"This is not a toy." Kim scolded. "It's not like the one Wade put together for you, it can go places you don't have any business going."
"It's okay, Kim." A voice from the little device said.
"Wade?"
A wide, smiling face appeared on the screen. "I pretty much figured when they started downloading games from the Mouse Ears Channel website it would be them, so I've been monitoring so they wouldn't get into any mischief. If you want, I can set them up with some really cool games. I know Ammie likes to play Tetris for hours on in."
"Please and thank you." She smiled at her old friend and passed the handheld back to the girls. She shook her head as she turned around and settled into the seat beside her son. He was already busy with the remote for the pull-down screen, flipping through the dozens of children's movies in the SUV's computer. Moments later, the Jabber Mittens appeared, singing one of their interminable "La-la-la" songs. He discovered them when he wasn't even two, watching them whenever he got the chance. Kim thought she might someday get used to it, but felt for her former foes when they literally got stuck in the program. She wondered how Drakken survived when his step-daughter discovered them at that age as well. Oh well, it could be worse. That purple dino-thingy might still be popular with the kids.
"Aw, come on man!" Ron hollered, looking in the rear-view mirror.
"What is it, honey?"
"That jerk in the semi behind us has been tailgating me for the last twenty miles. Dude! It's an eight-lane interstate, you can go around me." He waved his arms, forgetting the tinted windows would keep them from being visible from behind. "Go around! Around!"
"Ron, just amp down. I need to stop anyway. Find us a rest area."
"I thought we all took care of our business before we left the house."
"Hello! Who are you, Gene Stoppable? That was four hours ago, and if I've got to go, you know the kids do." Ron's father was famous for his non-stop driving. If it weren't for the fact his old Camry had a fairly small tank and its aging engine was craving more and more gasoline, he would never stop. Kim recalled, not too fondly, a trip she had taken with him to Ron's grandmother's back when they were eighteen. She made the terrible mistake of drinking half a pot of coffee that morning, then riding the bumpy road to her cabin, followed in turn by having to meet and greet his hyper-critical great aunts before she could dash inside to the bathroom.
At least he knew he had better stop. Even before she was pregnant she threatened to hang her backside out the back hatch if he didn't find a place to pull over. Somehow he sensed she wasn't kidding.
"Can you hold out till lunch?" he looked at her in the mirror. One glance at her eyes told the story. "Guess not."
Crossing her legs as best she could, she twisted around, looking through the back glass. Sure enough, there was the big rig. It was one of the big ones, with a large sleeper and a fairly long nose. Huge tanks on the sides pointed to it being a long-haul truck, meant to cover great distances with its load. From her vantage point, she couldn't tell what it was actually hauling.
"He is kinda close. Ron, better pull off at the next exit. My weirdar is going off, just a little."
"M, kay. Hey, there's a Bueno Nacho! Total score!"
"Anything, as long as its got a clean ladies room." She took one more glance behind her as they shifted lanes.
If her weirdar had been going off before, it pegged as the truck changed lanes right along with them.
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